Miaoli, Hsinchu, Taoyuan, Taipei (again XD)

To celebrate the end of week 11, we planned a long trip to the Northern part of Taiwan! Miaoli, Hsinchu and Taoyuan done in 2D1N (包车 princess life) and Taipei for 1D1N (free and easy!)

Miaoli- flying cow ranch

220NT per pax

We initially wanted to give this a miss after seeing so many animals/farms already! But after hearing from our friends that we can get to milk cows there, we were excited to try it out for ourselves!! It was a fun (albeit short) experience squeezing out fresh milk from a mother cow, but what was more epic was that the cow proceeded to laosai green shit in the middle of the milking session, while everyone fled to a safe distance and watched in shock.

Took a steep climb up a flight of stairs to see the butterfly garden. Even though it was quite limited with only 2 species of butterflies (white and black), we had fun passing a tame butterfly around on our hands for photos. The butterfly was so obliging!! Disclaimer: no butterflies were hurt in the process.

Free milk for every ticket! The malt milk (brown packaging) tasted like coco crunch and it was awesome. Fresh milk (pictured above) is quite normal haha

Miaoli- Chun Hsiang Strawberry Farm/Dahu Wineland Resort

We only managed to see the first batch of strawberries as they were not in full bloom yet! The fields are supposed to turn red (instead of green) when the season comes! It's more expensive to pick strawberries at this time so we decided to skip that. Still tried a cup of strawberries with chocolate but they were too soft ><

 

Miaoli- Nanzhuang old street

The food at this street is really mediocre except for the squid stall pictured above! The squid is freshly deep fried and sprinkled with chill and pepper. Super shiok and a must-try!

Hsinchu- Xiangshan wetlands

Our nice driver rushed to the wetlands just in time for the sunset! Which is a good thing because the wetlands is just a bare muddy land with sparse grass. The sunset made it look so awesome! The sky was lightened up in a rainbow coloured gradient as the sun set. Stayed for around 10 mins only as the winds were so strong!!

Hsinchu- City god Temple Night Market

This was a pretty unique night market as it was quite "food court" styled. We sat down and tried their beehoon, meatball soup and oyster omelet. The soup was really nice in the weather but it overall, this night market wasn't exceptional ><

Taoyuan- 富田花園農場

120NT per pax

Visited the flower gardens the next morning! I thought there'd only be flowers but there were quite a lot of animals- ponies, goats, pigs, ducks, dogs, doves and alpacas! As always, selfie time with the cute alpacas. 

Finally got a shot while it was stoning lol.

Many of their sculptures were love themed in this garden!

Taoyuan- 大溪老街

Yes finally. This is the most legit Lao3 Jie1 we have been to. After crossing a nice bridge with good scenery, the old street awaits with a large variety of food! Must tries are the chicken-on-stick and quail eggs at the start of the street and beancurd that my roomies raved about but I didn't get to try! Also, lots of sampling and everyone loves sampling so <3

Taoyuan- 鶯歌陶瓷老街

Pottery street that sells many porcelain items (cups, plates, teasets). Even had a DIY section to create your own items from scratch! 

TAIPEI FOOD TRAIL

Finally, the moment I have been waiting for... Trip to Taipei for food trail!! I kid you not, it was non stop eating the whole time.

First, our driver brought us to check in at the accommodation we booked and it was so spacious!!

Me and Jiahui happily snap chatting haha. The place had a living area, super spacious bed area and and area sectioned out as toilet. So comfy!! Next, we set off to cover Raohe and Shilin night markets.

 

Must try: 

Raohe: chicken sausage, beef cubes, cranberry juice

Shilin: Haodada jipai, ahzong meesua

All the best food we had from Taipei collaged (too taxing to post one by one)

The next day, split into 2 teams (lol) to queue for fuxing doujiangyoutiao (1hr) and haidilao (2-3hrs)

In between those 2 queues, we had dingtaifung!! (1hr+ queue)

My first time at HaiDiLao was so awesome! The Mala soup was so uber shiok and meat was so fresh! Every first timer should definitely order the noodle dish. They send a noodle man over and he dances with the noodles to lengthen it! And he occasionally tries to scare the watchers by flicking it into their face!! SEE, that yellow strip thing is the noodle!

Haha look at the gleeful noodle man. 

The most epic momont came when our noodle man accidentally hit something and the noodle broke!! He gave it to us and started to do another noodle, this time, perfectly. We had a good laugh dancing and playing with the destroyed noodle and pretending to be the noodle man lol. 

After Haodilao, our stomachs were exploding and so we decide to do some cardio by...... shopping at Wufenpu lol. Although I had  no buys because of weird looking clothes =.= We ended the day at Shida Night Market. Their Lu3wei4 (yongtaofoo lookalike) is a must try!!

Huge plate for 2 at 100NT. Ask for 小辣 for spice level of not the lady boss will spam her chilli sauce lol. But this dish is the bomb <3

Ended our food trail and stay at Taipei as very satisfied return visitors, and back to Kaohsiung now on the railway. Finally done updating, time to sleep!

The definition of YOLO

Here to blog about the crazy 4 days with my awesome case budz!

So it was a usual (or so I thought) Saturday morning where I thought I would be studying the day off for my audit and strat mgmt mid terms. 

The girls usually get hungry pretty early and I was too, so I was hoping people start to suggest to have lunch. I waited and waited until about 1, and finally they said they wanted lunch!!! Ran up the stairs to get changed.

Right after I was done, my door opened and

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The case budz walked in!!!!!

My brain couldn't process what I was seeing so I just stood there with my eyes about to pop out. I even considered the possibilities that they were just standees that my roomies brought in. But nope, on closer inspection, they were moving and laughing so they are real! 

I then had the eureka moment because the girls had been acting kind of strange before this:

1. We were just walking one day and Nicole said "eh? Jocelyn messaged me on Facebook" then suddenly said "oh nevermind". LOL. I immediately knew something was up but remembered case budz saying that they wanted to send me something for my birthday. So... It was most probably linked to that? I didn't want to spoil my own surprise, so I decided not to think much about it HAHA

2. One day when I came downstairs to the main area where the girls were chatting, they suddenly kept quiet and there was this unmistakably awkward vibe HAHA.

3. The girls and I usually give up on studying way before 1pm XD I was wondering why everyone was so studious that day.

#casebudzlove is real! They came to visit me!!!!!

Finally registered what was happening and hugged them tightly, very out of my anti-skinship character haha. The roomies were also at the door and Bel teared when we hugged LOL!!!

They told me I had 30 min to pack and then we're leaving for Taichung!!! My legs started trembling as this exceeded my wild-meter (they have finals and I have mid terms!!) but I still started packing anyways, with the thought, "is this really happening?" LOL.

Yes it was.

On the train ride to Taichung, I learnt that Jocelyn has booked a 5 star hotel at $120 for 2 days LOL. And it was really far from Taichung Railway Station and Fengchia Night Market which we wanted to go that night. So we incessantly complained about the hotel for the next 4 days XD

But take a look at this!!! Our hotel room is the best!! 2 super large and comfy beds with 2 toilets. Shiokness!! Nevertheless we continued complaining (and will continue complaining to annoy jocepuru hehehehe)

Went to Fengchia night market. The huge tako ball and fried squid are the bomb! Nuff said. 

Went back to hotel and do the thing we love the most!

Kbox!!!! Although our throats were in pain from too much fried food and the high notes were cui. Halfway though, we decided to take out the poker cards and start playing bridge. Effectively wasted half of our 4 hour booking HAHA.

Went back to the hotel room to plan the next day (yup, traveling without a plan is our style) The initial plan was to go sun moon lake, but we spontaneously thought it would be a better idea to go to 

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Taipei LOL

Hello from ximending.

Ah Zong Mee Sua is epic! Overdose on the chilli and garlic :)

Checked into our 3 star hotel at ximending and realized the difference between a 5 star and 3 star hotel XD At least it's much much cheaper hehe

Then to Shilin night market for more fried squid (MUST TRY), beef cubes, chicken cutlet, churros and fried Oreo <3

Our night plans was to go to a bar to celebrate Jocelyn's coming of age. On the way there, there was this duck shop that looked promising so we bought half a suck to share. Turns out that this is a takeaway shop and the boss doesn't give out cutlery or plates!!! 

We spent the next 30 mins looking for cutlery (thank you 7-11!) and ended up eating the duck at.....

An ATM area =.=

20 min later... Finally settled the duck.

Went to ximending and realized that the bars were all quiet because it was a Monday. What we didn't realized was that we were at a gay bar district lol. And the server sort of fell in love with kc's sore throat voice lol. 

We continued playing cards until the bar closed and went back to the hotel and continued playing cards. Yup, that's how most of our holiday was spent....

Last day, we travelled 6 hours back to Kaohsiung for their flight back. 

Few facts I realized from this 4 days

1) We have such high traveling luck that everything works out without much planning 

2) We can have fun doing anything, even playing card games on a holiday (even though I lose all the time)

3) I love my case budz so so much, thank you guys for coming for me :)

4) can we be friends forever? 

Tainan

I'm back from a 2 day 0 night Tainan trip! Yup, we saved on accommodation and travelled to and fro Kaohsiung and Tainan because train fares are much cheaper ($3sgd). The long traveling hours did take a toll on us though- we snoozed in the bus/car when transporting from place to place.

Guanzilin mud spa

From Xinying Train Station, transfer to 2 shuttle buses. Took 3 hours in total from Kaohsiung =.=

I love interactive experiences so I was really looking forward to the mud spa!

There are a few pools that you can try ranging from fish-eating-dead-skin pool, hot spring pool, ultrasonic pool, lavender pool, phyto-something pool, a cold water pool and a real swimming pool lol. I would say that the fish pool was the most interesting to me as a first timer. Really fun and ticklish haha.

We actually expected to see a mud pool which was the highlight of the attraction. However, the mud was in a tiny bucket at the corner of the hot spring lol @.@ nevertheless we applied the mud and... photo taking time!!

It is beyond me how the girls managed to smile properly. I couldn't move my face because the mud hardened!

Food- 桶仔鸡

Guanzilin is famous for this dish so we had to give it a try! 600NT for a whole chicken @.@

I realized I forgot to take a picture of the chicken but I did take:

Yingxin hard at work ripping the chicken apart. (it came as a whole)

Very yummy indeed!

We then took the (extremely infrequent) public buses to visit some of the famous attractions.

水火洞

We cabbed to and fro Guanzilin for 1000NT... Think we got scammed...

We expected to see a huge fire from the cave as per internet pics, but it turned out to be rather small @.@ we were impressed that the fire was boiling the water but doesn't get extinguished though.

To make our cabbing worth it, we started to take excessive photos, which resulted in:

That was all to the attraction lol....Nuff said. 

林百货

This place is known for architecture and having a lift from the Japanese Occupation according to my roomies. Looked pretty modern though:

The rest of the building consisted of rather overpriced souvenirs haha.

府中街

Many small shops and some good food!

There was this really nice peach flavored ice shop!

We all loved this fried instant noodle dish!!! Somehow we saw the chef put the same seasoning as per normal Maggie Mee but it still tasted better!

Hahaha unappetizing shot but it was good!

Sicao 绿色tunnel 

Finally made it to the second day where we 包车! No need to wait and rush for public transport and so so convenient! Back to our princess life style haha.

This was a 200NT boat ride through low lying vegetation. 

Can't tell from the picture, but the weather was scorching hot at 31 deg!!

Haha random pic of our transport! 8 seater taxi!!

Sio Salt Museum

Went to some salt exhibition center next! They had salt flavored ice cream that we didn't try @.@

Pretty salt samples on display!

Anping old street

Long streets with a wide variety of food! 

The lemon+winter melon tea was so refreshing in the weather!

While some of the princesses went to the fort, the rest of us hobo-ed outside. Most rejuvenating 15 minutes of the day. Shiok!

Hahahahha XD

Qigu Salt Mountain

I thought we would see a mountain as huge at the majestic ones from the other parts of Taiwan, but this was a short salt hill HAHA. 

Luckily the skies were nice so we could take more Picts!

Jingzijiao Tile-paved Salt Fields

Fact of the day: sea water is gathered to these salt field and daily, workers would gather the salt into a pile

Love this photo that our driver took for us!!

Beimen Crystal Church 

This church was a completely empty chapel that we could only see from a distance! I guess people just book them for wedding purposes? Many people snapping photos from afar!

胡厝寮彩繪村

Interesting village with really well-done drawings on the walls!

Takes around 1 hour to cover the whole place because the attractions are quite spread out! A map is available at the entrance.

Flower night market

It was amazing to see so many stalls because it was an empty land when we drove past in the afternoon!!

They have such a variety of stalls and even one that sells pet hamsters, rabbits and... a snake. 

Anyways we had so much food, like 柠檬爱玉, sausage wrapped in chicken, 锅贴, garlic bread and egg tart! Tummy was happily filled hahahahha. 

Then we made our way back to Tainan train station and went back to our comfy apartment at Kaohsiung.